Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.
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The number of English language learners (ELLs) in American schools has more than doubled over the past 20 years. The articles in this section will give you lots of useful ideas for creating an environment that is welcoming and supportive for your ELLs and their families, and also encourages and facilitates learning.
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Students who comprehend the most from their reading are those who know a lot about words. These students know about word prefixes, suffixes, word roots, and multiple meanings of words. Families can help develop word knowledge through simple conversations focused on words.
Good Night, Sleep Tight: Preschoolers and Sleep
When to Call Your Child's Teacher
How to Prepare for an ESL Job Interview
If you are looking for a new ESL or bilingual teaching position, there are a number of things you can do to help prepare for the interview. This article outlines general information that will get you started, as well as areas of your own experience that may be helpful to highlight in the interview.
How to Read With a Squiggly Baby (or Toddler!)
Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia, and Vision
Parent Tips: How to Get Your Teen Reading
Strong reading skills are important for teenagers, but sometimes it can be a challenge to get them reading! Here are some ways to encourage your teen to read.
Social and Emotional Needs of Middle and High School ELLs
Phonics Instruction for Middle and High School ELLs
While it may seem the most expedient solution, it is not appropriate to put an older ELL student in a lower grade to receive the appropriate reading instruction. Age-appropriate activities integrated with academic content give older students the opportunity to make progress as readers.
Tips for Teaching Middle and High School ELLs
Picture This! Using Mental Imagery While Reading
Does My Preschooler Have Delayed Development?
Tips for Parents: Parent-Teacher Conferences
These bilingual tips from Colorín Colorado give parents an overview of parent-teacher conferences and answer questions such as "What if I don't speak English?" and "What will my child's teacher want to talk about with me?" Parent checklists are provided that can be used before, during, and after the conference. These tips are also available as a downloadable pdf in English and Spanish.
Reading 101 for English Language Learners
In this article, Kristina Robertson highlights ELL instructional strategies based on the five components of reading as outlined in "Teaching Children to Read," by the National Reading Panel (2000). This report is a study of research-based best practices in reading instruction and it focuses on the following five instructional areas: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Comprehension.
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: Math and Literacy for Preschoolers
Parent Tips: Help Your Child Have a Good School Year
10 Ways to Support ELLs in the School Library
The school library is an important resource for English language learners. It may be the first place many students and their families get experience using a lending library. What can school librarians can to show ELLs that libraries are welcoming places of entertainment and enrichment? This article offers some ideas.
Help your child get the most out of a family or school trip to the museum. Spend some time at the library or online to learn more about subjects that interest your child. And don't forget to ask family members about their own interesting collections!
Successful Field Trips with English Language Learners
English language learners can benefit from field trips that provide an experience that enhances classroom learning. It can be overwhelming for a teacher to think of organizing all the details of a field trip, but with some planning beforehand and a few extra steps, field trips can be very successful! This article offers some ways to make the field trips with ELLs go more smoothly and to provide students with a meaningful academic experience.
Grocery Store Literacy for Preschoolers
Playing games is a great way to provide additional practice with early reading skills. Here are six games parents or tutors can use to help young readers practice word recognition, spelling patterns, and letter-sound knowledge.
Writing Poetry with English Language Learners
This article discusses strategies for writing poetry with ELLs, presents an overview of poetry forms that can be used effectively in writing lessons, and suggests some ideas for ways to share student poetry.
Introducing and Reading Poetry with English Language Learners
This article offers some ideas on how to introduce poetry to ELLs and integrate it with reading instruction, as well as some ideas for reading poetry aloud in a way that will encourage oral language development.
Parent Tips: Helping Your Child with Test-Taking
As a parent, there are many ways you can support your child's academic success, which will in turn help your child with test-taking throughout the school year.
Testing: An Introduction for Parents
As a parent, there are many ways you can support your child's academic success, which will in turn help your child with test-taking throughout the school year. The following articles offer a number of suggestions of ways that you can help your child prepare for tests, and support your child's learning habits.
Math Instruction for English Language Learners
Language plays an important part in math instruction, particularly for ELLs. This article offers some strategies for making language an integral part of math instruction, and for ensuring that ELLs have the tools and language they need to master mathematical concepts, procedures, and skills.
Getting Ready to Read: Family Activities
There are many activities that parents can share with their children at home in order to strengthen reading and language skills! These articles offer an overview of some of those activities, as well as specific ideas to use.
Readers' Theater: Oral Language Enrichment and Literacy Development for ELLs
Getting Ready to Read: Using Storytelling, Rhymes, and More!
From singing and rhyming to storytelling and acting, these activities will help children to develop a wide array of reading readiness skills.
Working with Community Organizations to Support ELL Students
When building a support network for English language learners, community organizations can play a valuable role and offer resources that schools may not have at their disposal. This article offers some ideas on ways that schools can partner with community groups to support ELLs.
ELL Student Success: The Path to College
For English language learners, the challenges of going to and applying to college can be overwhelming. ELL teachers can play an important role, however, by helping students prepare for and navigate the application process. This section features a number of articles with great ideas for ways that ELL educators can support their students as they consider their future plans.
Increasing ELL Student Reading Comprehension with Non-fiction Text
One of the most important skills students learn as they transition into middle and high school is how to get information from a non-fiction text. This skill can be especially challenging for ELLs, who may not have had much experience working independently with expository texts. This Bright Ideas article offers ways that teachers can help ELLs work effectively with non-fiction texts and includes strategies for introducing components, structure, and purpose of expository texts.
Creating a College-Going Culture for English Language Learners
Some English language learners may not know what to expect from the college application process. Others don't start thinking about college until their junior or senior year. One way to ensure that students are prepared to apply for college is to create a college-going culture in your school and across your district.
School Attendance: A Key to Success
Did you know that school attendance is one of the most important factors in a student’s academic success? Being at school every day ensures that students won’t miss important lessons, assignments, activities, exams, and school events. This article suggests some things you can do to help your child get the most of each school day, and offers tips for ways you can make sure you child doesn’t fall behind when a school absence necessary.
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words
How many times have you watched your child choose a book and then pore over the illustrations? When you look at a children's book, the illustrations can make the story come alive in magical ways. For some suggestions on how to use picture books to engage your child when reading together, take a look at this article.
Retrospective: Language Instruction in Native American Communities
This article about the evolution of language instruction in Native American communities during the past 30 years was written for Colorín Colorado by Dr. Catherine Collier, a leader in the fields of cross-cultural, bilingual, and special education.
How to Help Your Child with LD Have a Happy Holiday
The holiday season is a time for family togetherness, fun, and friendship. But children who struggle with social and behavioral problems can feel lonely and excluded during this happy time. This article gives you a dozen ways to help you child join the fun.
Selecting Books for Your Child: Finding 'Just Right' Books
How can parents help their children find books that are not "too hard" and not "too easy" but instead are "just right"? Here's some advice.
Handwriting: What's Normal, What's Not
This article lists some milestones to look for as your child's handwriting skills begin to develop. The article also describes some signs and symptoms of dysgraphia, a learning disability that affects a child's handwriting and ability to hold a pen, pencil, or crayon.
Tips for Educators of ELLs: Reading in Grades 7-12
These tips offer some great ways to help your regular and newcomer English Language Learners become confident and successful readers. Add a new language strategy each week, and watch your students' reading improve!
Tips for Educators of ELLs: Reading in Grades 4-6
The tips below offer some great ways to help your English language learners (ELLs) become confident and successful readers. Add a new language strategy each week, and watch your students' reading improve!
Tips for Educators of ELLs: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12
Research shows that vocabulary development is one of the most important skills students need to acquire to become English-proficient. This article provides some strategies to help you get started.
Tips for Educators of ELLs: What To Do First in Grades 4-12
Before you begin to work with your ELLs, these preparation strategies will make your reading instruction more productive and effective.
10 Steps for Parents: If Your Child Has a Learning Disability
If your child has been diagnosed with a learning disability, there are many things you can do to support him. Here are 10 ideas to get you started!
How does the special education system work in the United States?
This article offers parents an introduction to the special education system in the U.S., and provides a brief overview of the IDEA law mandating special education services.
What is an IEP meeting and who can request one?
This article offers an introduction to the Individual Education Program (IEP) and discusses parent participation in the creation of an IEP.
Learning Disabilities: An Introduction for Parents
This article provides parents with a basic introduction to what learning disabilities are, and how they are identified. It also provides a list of steps that parents can take if they suspect that their child has a learning disability.
If you are interested in bringing the local, state, or presidential election to your classroom, try some of these resources! We've included links to children's booklists, lesson plans and websites full of ideas you can use in the classroom.
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Colorín Colorado is a free web-based, bilingual service that provides information, activities, and advice for educators and Spanish-speaking families of English language learners (ELLs, also known as students of English as a second language).
Colorín Colorado is produced by Reading Rockets — an educational service of WETA, the flagship public broadcasting station in the nation's capital. Original artwork by Caldecott Award-winning illustrator David Diaz is used with permission.
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Colorín Colorado receives major funding from the American Federation of Teachers. Additional funding is provided by the National Institute for Literacy and the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
¡Colorín Colorado! ® is a registered trademark of WETA.
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